Is it unethical to watch NFL football? Jonathan Kay, a former fan, says it is, because even the league now admits its players are at a dramatically increased risk of suffering long-term and debilitating brain ailments. “We have an ethical obligation not to pump money into a sport whose attraction is built on the destruction of young men’s brains,” he argued in these pages earlier in the week.

I’ll declare my interest here, or my lack of it: I consider gridiron football inoffensive, uninteresting background noise. I have no team in this game. But I think Jon’s view is, above all, simplistic.

The latest news comes from actuaries hired by the NFL to help bash out an estimated $675-million settlement between the NFL and former players. The actuaries estimated 28% of the current population of roughly 21,000 retired players will be diagnosed with a “compensable disease” (whether or not they actually apply for compensation). The vast majority of diagnoses, 98%, will be of either Alzheimer’s or Level 2 (“moderate”) dementia; the rest will be of Parkinson’s (0.4%), ALS (0.5%) and — postmortem — chronic traumatic encephalopathy (1.3%).

As we know, and as always stood to common-sense reason, the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia is dramatically higher among football players. Prevalence could top 5% among ex-players aged 65-69, the actuaries estimate, whereas estimates for the general population in that age group range between 0.1% and 2%. Among ex-players aged 80-84, the prevalence might be 22%, as opposed to 12%-13% among the general population.

That sounds horrifying. But there’s another very logical way to look at it: According to the actuaries’ estimates, a former player would be 85 — nearly a decade older than the average American male’s life expectancy — before he had better-than-even odds of developing dementia after an NFL career.

That’s a long retirement, and potentially an extremely lucrative one. You can make a hell of a lot of money playing football. There are 500 players in the NFL this season with base salaries of over $1-million. If a player has the talent, is lucky enough to stay healthy and properly manages his money, in just a few years he and his family could be comfortable-to-filthy rich for the rest of their lives.

If you’re already living a reasonably comfortable, secure existence, the calculation here might require serious thought. There might be an amount of money I would accept in exchange for a one-in-20 risk of dementia by age 65; it’s more likely there’s an amount I would trade for a one-in-five risk by age 85. For all I know, my risk is higher as it stands. For all I know, I’ll be mowed down by a bus tomorrow as I’m checking Twitter. I could do great things with the sums of money I’m envisioning.

For someone born into poverty, however, the calculation would be totally different. If your fallback isn’t a reasonably comfortable, secure existence, but a lifetime of clawing your way from paycheque to paycheque and struggling to put food in your children’s mouths, I imagine the risk of dementia, decades in the future, might not look particularly horrifying at all when weighed against a couple of million bucks — never mind 10 times that — in the bank.

Many thousands of other people who make less lavish incomes off the back of the NFL — stadium workers, bartenders, waitresses, pizza deliverers

If everyone fulfilled the ethical obligation Jon prescribes, they would be subtracting millions of dollars from the bottom lines of consenting adults who receive very generous danger pay for their efforts. And they would be robbing, too, the many thousands of other people who make less lavish incomes off the back of the NFL — stadium workers, bartenders, waitresses, pizza deliverers.

“Is it really that much fun to watch a football game knowing that some of the people on your screen won’t be able to recognize their grandchildren?” he asks. You’re free to conclude it isn’t — but it’s not unethical to conclude otherwise. It just means you, like the players on the field, have different priorities.

The tale of Ray Rice and the National Football League is even worse than it appears. Rice had been arrested for assaulting his fiancé in February and, as a first time offender, was put on probation in May. The NFL then suspended Rice in July for two games, creating an uproar over the comparatively lenient penalty. In August, the NFL revised its policies and decreed that domestic violence incidents would earn a six-game suspension at minimum. Then, last week, the security video of Rice punching his now wife was released by a celebrity gossip site. The shock of seeing her knocked cold and then being dragged out of the elevator generated widespread public revulsion. Rice’s team terminated his contract and the NFL suspended him indefinitely.

The NFL’s critics argued that if the league wanted to know what Rice had done, it could well have obtained the video on its own. The fact that it did not, indicated that it was not overly concerned this incident of domestic violence. Administering the death penalty to Rice’s career only came with the bad publicity, the only capital offense in the NFL — a marketing and media behemoth that is only secondarily a sports league.

The NFL protested and said it simply did not know how bad Rice’s attack on his wife was until watching it on TV. In any case, the fact remains that Rice was bounced out of the NFL, not for assaulting his wife, as much as assaulting his wife on video. The who-knew-what-when scandal machine subsequently kicked into overdrive and the NFL is desperately doing what it does best — spreading money around to make the problem go away. To date, it has hired a former FBI director to investigate — a blatant attempt to purchase his legal credibility. It also hired four female advisers with lots experience — an attempt to purchase their credibility on combatting family violence.

“Although the NFL is celebrated for what happens on the field, we must be equally vigilant in what we do off the field,” said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in the midst of the Rice saga. “The public response reinforced my belief that the NFL is held to a higher standard, and properly so. Much of the criticism stemmed from a fundamental recognition that the NFL is a leader, that we do stand for important values and that we can project those values in ways that have a positive impact beyond professional football. We embrace this role and the responsibility that comes with it.”

The NFL’s breast cancer merchandising campaign is about four times as lucrative for the NFL as it is for cancer research

Almost every line of that is mendacious. The NFL is not held to a higher standard. It is held to a lower standard. It is, for example, tax-exempt like a charity, despite the billions in annual revenues it receives — a 1960s favour done for it by a Congress no doubt plied with NFL largesse. It routinely hoovers up hundreds of millions in public money for its facilities, and then charges near larcenous prices to the same taxpayers it already fleeced. A condition of holding the commercial orgy known as the Super Bowl is that local authorities permit the NFL to keep all the revenue, pay no local or sales taxes and not have to pay for its security costs. At the 2018 Super Bowl in Minnesota, for example, the NFL has demanded free police escorts for its pampered billionaire owners.

Last year, I wrote about the NFL’s breast cancer merchandising campaign, which is about four times as lucrative for the NFL and its teams as it is for cancer research. The NFL makes huge sums of money off women’s bodies, in the traditional beer-ads-and-cheerleaders way, and then turns around to make more money in a progressive women’s-cancer-research way. That this effrontery is nowhere questioned, but assumed to be business as usual, indicates that the NFL is held to quite a low standard indeed.

In Wednesday’s National Post, Jonathan Kay detailed how the NFL has resisted even acknowledging the long-term health damage done to its players by head injuries, let alone doing anything about it. Indeed, despite a major increase in games lost to injuries in the last six years, the NFL recently proposed increasing the length of the regular season, which would certainly increase injuries — and generate more revenue.

Whether a sports league has adequate policies for off-field criminality should not be a matter of national importance. But it is, because the NFL has a completely disproportionate role in American life. It does not require great historical imagination to see ancient Roman excesses, with the NFL taking the lead in this gladiatorial culture. The players are well compensated, but they still look up to the emperor for a verdict. Rice got the thumbs down last week. The NFL — a gladiatorial culture of excess, dressed up in the service of the republic’s “values” — provides the circuses for the decadent culture of a declining imperium.

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/father-raymond-j-de-souza-the-nfls-immoral-game/feed0stdNFL-Sponsorships_FootballAP Photo/Joe MahoneyJonathan Kay: Ray Rice may be a brute. But he still deserves due processhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/jonathan-kay-ray-rice-may-be-a-brute-but-he-still-deserves-due-process
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/jonathan-kay-ray-rice-may-be-a-brute-but-he-still-deserves-due-process#commentsWed, 17 Sep 2014 16:48:40 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=163550

Here is the part where I win friends and influence people by rushing to the defence of a guy who smashed a woman’s face with his fist in a casino elevator. Because there’s a principle at stake here: Just as even the most despicable hatemonger should have the right to free speech, the most vicious, wife-abusing thug should have the right to due process. Which is what Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice didn’t get.

And now here is the part where I convince you — by resorting to a personal, second-person hypothetical. Imagine you’ve done something terrible. Maybe to your spouse. Maybe to a neighbour. Maybe to your pet. Maybe to someone who looked at you the wrong way in a bar, or who dented your car in a parking lot. You’re caught, charged with the crime, brought before a judge, sentenced and admit your guilt. Now imagine that a few months after all this happens, a video file surfaces that shows the world the horrible thing that you already admitted doing. Now also imagine that the judge sees the video, hauls you back into court, and ramps up your sentence by an order of magnitude because … well, because millions of other people saw the video and they were upset by it. Indeed, the judge explains that if he doesn’t ramp up your sentence, the public might get mad at him, too. And we can’t have that.

Does that sound like due process? No? Then you’re on my side when it comes to Ray Rice, because this is essentially what happened to him in the Court of Gridiron Justice.

As is now well known, Rice assaulted his then-fiancée at Revel Casino in Atlantic City on February 15. He subsequently confessed what he’d done to Ravens management and to the NFL. He was indicted on third-degree aggravated assault on March 27, but the charges were dropped after Rice agreed to court-ordered counselling. The league suspended Rice for two games and fined him more than a half million dollars.

Rice himself personally met with league commissioner Roger Goodell on June 16, and there is no indication he hid any material detail of what had happened. Indeed, those details already were widely known because portions of the elevator security video already had been leaked. “Rice allegedly struck Palmer unconscious on Feb. 15 while in a casino elevator in Atlantic City,” ESPN reported at the time the suspension was handed down. “Video surfaced online showing Rice dragging an apparently unconscious Palmer out of the elevator.” Nothing contained in the subsequent release of more dramatic video footage on September 8 (showing the actual punch) changes any material element of the misdeeds for which Rice already had been sanctioned.

But what did change is that the second video release inflamed public opinion. That is predictable, because video is a more emotionally compelling medium than, say, written court records. Women’s groups declared (correctly) that a two-game suspension was a disappointingly lenient punishment for a guy who knocks a woman unconscious. It’s something they had been saying back in July. But this time, they were backed up my millions of ordinary people who were shocked by what they saw in the video. Many of these people were NFL fans. Some were advertisers.

So Goddell panicked. “I didn’t get it right,” he now says. The league commissioner also claimed the right to a do-over. On September 8, hours after the second video was released, the Ravens released Rice, and Rice’s two-game NFL suspension was reclassified as “indefinite,” based on the “new evidence.”

As noted above, the new evidence wasn’t really new at all. It simply was a video record of facts that already were well known. Admittedly, the NFL’s disciplinary procedures are not bound by constitutional safeguards when it comes to due process. But how can the NFL even pretend to abide by any coherent system of disciplinary procedure if the commissioner claims the right to amend and punishment — to turn two games into, effectively, forever — based on no other criterion except a desire to protect the NFL brand?

Star athletes are supposed to be role models. They constantly fail in this capacity, but there still is some virtue in aspiring to create a league culture in which NFL players are seen to uphold solid values as well as being great athletes. But surely the same is true of the NFL itself, which styles itself as the very embodiment of wholesome, authentically American weekend entertainment. Due process is as American as apple pie, hot dogs and running off-tackle on third-and-one. In its bid to satisfy mob demands in the Ray Rice case, the league dropped the ball.

On Tuesday, the NFL players’ union announced they were appealing Rice’s indefinite suspension, citing the due-process arguments described above. Their collective bargaining agreement requires that a hearing date be set within 10 days — September 26, in this case. I believe they will prevail, and that Ray Rice will be back on the field before long.

Many fans will boo him, which is their right. Catcalls and taunts are the correct medium for mob sentiment. The edicts of a league commissioner are not.

Six years ago, University of Michigan researchers investigated the then-alleged phenomenon of former NFL players exhibiting disproportionately high rates of dementia in middle age. The result, based on 2008 phone interviews with 1,063 randomly selected retired players: Six percent of ex-players aged 50-plus reported that they’d been diagnosed with a dementia-related condition — compared to a U.S. national average of just over 1%. For players aged between 30 and 39, the rate was 1.9% — 19 times higher than the overall national average, which is just one in a thousand.

Surprise, surprise: Making your living getting smashed in the head every week destroys your brain.

The NFL itself had commissioned that study. But when the results came in, they rejected them as shoddy and inconclusive. Go back to your Sunday face paint, big screens, beer and corn chips, everybody. Nothing to see here.

Since then, evidence that football harms the human brain has been mounting steadily — in large part thanks to class-action litigation brought by thousands of former players, many of them hobbled by Alzheimer’s disease, Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Parkinson’s disease and even ALS. These players aren’t looking for anyone to do a “bucket challenge” on their behalf — they just want money to help fund the nursing care they’re going to need in their brain-injured invalid years.

This week, those former players — and there are at least 3,500 of them, with thousands more likely to emerge in coming years — came closer to getting that help: For the first time in its history, the league has admitted that ex-NFLers suffer brain damage at higher rates than the general public. According to the NFL’s own actuarial data, “former players [in the studied class] between 50 and 59 years old develop Alzheimer’s disease and dementia at rates 14 to 23 times higher than the general population of the same age range,” ESPN reports. “The rates for players between 60-64 are as much as 35 times the rate of the general population.”

What this means is that the NFL is more or less where the tobacco industries were in the late 1990s, just after the heads of the major companies had lined up before Congress and insisted that data linking cigarettes to cancer was “inconclusive.” A few weeks after that infamous spectacle, a box containing leaked documents from the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation demonstrated that they were lying. The gig was up, and Big Tobacco was brought to heel with the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, which, among other things, forced them to stop lying about tobacco’s health effects through such propaganda groups as the “Tobacco Institute.”

These past few weeks, the NFL has gotten bad press following the release of a video showing running back Ray Rice smashing his then-fiancée in a casino elevator. Sources say Rice told NFL commissioner Roger Goodell back in June that he’d punched his girlfriend, but the league banned Rice only once the news went public. The NFL, as with the tobacco companies 20 years ago, is a giant money-printing machine. The people who run it would tell whatever lies they had to — whether about women getting concussed in elevators, or men getting concussed on the field — until publicly available evidence makes the lie untenable.

It’s sickening that some female NFL fans now go to games wearing Ray Rice jerseys — which is basically telling the world that a woman should value her violent Sunday entertainment more than her face and skull. But the rest of the NFL’s fans should be ashamed, too: Of the 22 players who appear on the field on any given play, a few of them are statistically destined to living with dementia before they are even in their golden years. Is it really that much fun to watch a football game knowing that some of the people on your screen won’t be able to recognize their grandchildren?

Yes, all sports have their dangers. And we always knew that football players could blow out their knee or elbow on any given play. But the brain is not like the other body parts — and there is an important moral difference between a sport that puts at risk mere mechanical appendages, and a sport that compromises the organ that is the source of our identity, enjoyment and soul. A man can live a great life without a leg. No one says that about someone with advanced Alzheimer’s.

Football is an exciting game — in large part because the impact speeds between players are high. And I admit that I spent many years watching it. But that was before researchers showed us that the mechanics of the game systematically exceed the engineering design limits of even a helmeted human skull.

Our knowledge of this fact — and even the NFL now admits is it is a fact — means we have an ethical obligation not to pump money into a sport whose attraction is built on the destruction of young men’s brains.

“We decide, based on the evidence properly before us, that these registrations must be cancelled because they were disparaging to Native Americans at the respective times they were registered.”

The “Redskins” name is the subject for cancellation for “entertainment services — namely, football exhibitions rendered in stadia and through the media of radio and television broadcasts.”

The team’s cheerleading squad, the “Redskinettes” are also subject to the cancellation, for “entertainment services, namely, cheerleaders who perform dance routines at professional football games and exhibitions and other personal appearances.”

It’s fair to accuse the office of selective vision – or at the very least of bowing to political pressure, from President Barack Obama and Senate majority leader Harry Reid, on down. (In a grandiose moment this week, Reid threatened to boycott all Redskins’ home games.)

The board’s ruling also raises the question of its failure to act on other patently racist trademarks. How come companies are still allowed to use Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s (African Americans), Land O’Lakes (Native Americans), Eskimo Pie (Inuit) and Chiquita (Latinas)? All these play on outdated stereotypes that may offend some people.

In case you were wondering whether the Obama administration could possibly find another federal agency to weaponize against its opponents, wonder no longer. The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) just cancelled the trademark for the Washington Redskins, claiming that the team’s name is disparaging to Native Americans.

It is unclear what evidence was used by USPTO bureaucrats to quantify and determine how disparaging the name is. In fact, a 2004 poll of Native Americans found that 90% of respondents did not believe the name was offensive.

In fact, the ruling is quite limited in scope though it will hit the team where it hurts — in the pocketbook, writes Theresa Vargas at The Washington Post.

The ruling does not mean that the Redskins have to change the name of the team. It does affect whether the team and the NFL can make money from merchandising because it limits the team’s legal options when others use the logos and the name on T-shirts, sweatshirts, beer glasses and licence plate holders.

In addition, Native Americans have won at this stage before, in 1999. But the team and the NFL won an appeal to federal court in 2009. The court did not rule on the merits of the case, however, but threw it out, saying that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to file it. The team is likely to make the same appeal this time.

And, as lawyer Michael McCann explains in Sports Illustrated, it doesn’t set a precedent for other sports teams with similarly objectionable names.

Cancellation of the Redskins’ federal trademark has no legal effect on other team names that arguably relate to Native Americans. The Kansas City Chiefs Kansas City Chiefs, Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians, Chicago Blackhawks and Golden State Warriors are not parties to the Redskins legal dispute, and actions by the USPTO on the Redskins name do not impact those teams.

It seems to me as if he is going to hold on. I mean all of the sudden — I mean, for 70-some odd years this was a zero issue, and then it became an issue. I understand we live in this politically correct environment. It’s crazier than ever; you know, senators want to weigh in on this, like there’s nothing better to do in Congress. This becomes a big issue. I mean, I just think it’s nuts. And I do know, I’ve talked to Snyder about it — not recently but when we were in Washington last year — and he basically said “over my dead body.”

That stance, of course, may change, notes Mike Chiari in the Bleacher Report,

A wealthy man like Snyder may brush off the financial issues that this creates in the spirit of keeping the name, but he may now be under pressure from the NFL to make a change.

This situation is still fluid since an appeal is likely to come, but those who oppose the Redskins nickname have clearly landed the first haymaker in this prize fight.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/redskins-ruling-aims-to-hit-team-where-it-hurts-in-the-pocketbook/feed0stdFILE: U.S. Patent Office Rules Redskins Nickname DisparagingDr. Aw: The lesson of NFL kicker Matt Prater is that calling in sick can sometimes be the best thing for a teamhttp://news.nationalpost.com/health/dr-aw-the-lesson-of-denver-broncos-matt-prater-may-be-that-calling-in-sick-is-sometimes-the-best-thing-for-the-team-2
http://news.nationalpost.com/health/dr-aw-the-lesson-of-denver-broncos-matt-prater-may-be-that-calling-in-sick-is-sometimes-the-best-thing-for-the-team-2#commentsTue, 28 Jan 2014 12:00:04 +0000http://life.nationalpost.com/?p=131221

Matt Prater is one of the best kickers in American football. He made 25 of 26 field goal attempts in the regular season for the Denver Broncos, and went five for five in the playoffs. Among his successes was the NFL’s longest-ever field goal of 64 yards.

And yet, last week, while the rest of his team prepared for this Sunday’s Super Bowl, Prater’s boss, Broncos’ coach John Fox, told him to stay home. For three consecutive days.

Why? Because Matt Prater was sick. And the coach didn’t want him to infect the rest of the team.

Under the media microscope created by Super Bowl week, Prater’s sick days triggered a lot of discussion and debate — and one I find particularly interesting given the ongoing arguments about sick days that have occurred across Canada this month.

The discussion began earlier in January, when the president of the Ontario Medical Association, Dr. Scott Wooder, released a flu-season reminder that included the assertion that bosses should “not require sick notes” from employees. Policies that require sick employees to justify their absences with notes, Wooder said, force “patients into the doctor’s office when they are sick, which only encourages the spread of germs to those in the waiting room.”

Front-line primary-care doctors often find sick notes to be one of the more vexing parts of the job

Front-line primary-care doctors often find sick notes to be one of the more vexing parts of the job. Early in my career, when I worked in community-based urgent-care clinics, the university students would come in like clockwork every exam season. “Doctor, I missed my English exam two days ago because I was too sick to go,” one might say. “Can I get a note?” Another classic scenario involved a first-time patient coming in to request a sick note because a boss was stressing them out.

University administrators and employers hope that docs will act as detectives, deducing whether patients are telling lies about their health

University administrators and employers hope that docs will act as detectives, deducing whether patients are telling lies about their health. But the wealth of medical information available on the Internet makes any illness easy to fake — particularly at walk-in clinics, where physicians rarely know their patients well. The Canadian Medical Association and the Ontario Medical Association have both produced position papers clarifying the physician’s role in the return-to-work process — but the reality is, most front-line physicians don’t have the time to do this well. They tend to default to the request of the patient.

There are physicians who have been trained to understand health and the workplace, and I’m one of them. Our training is in something called occupational medicine. Such occupational physicians are experts in determining whether a given illness or condition makes it impossible to work. But even occupational physicians can find it tricky to navigate the potential conflicts of interest our role poses. A physician works in the best interests of the patient. But an occupational physician is employed by a company — and sometimes the interests of the company and the patient diverge. A 2013 French study found that burnout among occupational physicians was more than double the rate of general practitioners. Perhaps the cause is the difficulty of pleasing multiple stakeholders.

How thorny all this can be is best suggested by some of what happens in the sports world. I once cared for a former NFL lineman who played in the 1990s. He described the ice baths the players took after the games, the painkillers they took before, and most of all, the way the team physicians treated most players as work horses. Team MDs used high technology and the best medicine to ensure everyone played on Sunday — without seeming to care about the long-term effects on individual players. It was all about optimal performance.

But the NFL has changed a lot in recent years. Team doctors are becoming more sophisticated when it comes to safeguarding player health — from concussions, for example, as well as more pedestrian concerns, such as the common flu. Years ago, an NFL coach may have told Broncos kicker Matt Prater to suck it up, to shake off his flu symptoms and get out there and practice for the Super Bowl. Today, Prater is told to stay home if he feels lousy, to prevent him from infecting other key players.

Most employees would prefer to be healthy and on the job, whether they’re line workers, or NFL kickers

Will the corporate world eventually go the way of pro sports, and evolve a more progressive sick policy? What would that look like, anyway? Encouraging employees to be responsible about their selection of sick days would help, as would requiring sick notes only after a sustained absence. Employers may also choose to invest in company-owned wellness clinics for rapid diagnostics and treatment for short-term illness — and the wellness clinics would be better positioned than taxpayer-funded general practitioners to provide sick notes. Most employees would prefer to be healthy and on the job, whether they’re line workers, or NFL kickers.

—Dr. James Aw is the medical director of the Medcan Clinic, a leading private health clinic in Toronto. For more information, visit medcan.com.

Related

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/health/dr-aw-the-lesson-of-denver-broncos-matt-prater-may-be-that-calling-in-sick-is-sometimes-the-best-thing-for-the-team-2/feed0stdpraterDr. Aw: The lesson of NFL kicker Matt Prater is that calling in sick can sometimes be the best thing for a teamhttp://news.nationalpost.com/health/dr-aw-the-lesson-of-denver-broncos-matt-prater-may-be-that-calling-in-sick-is-sometimes-the-best-thing-for-the-team
http://news.nationalpost.com/health/dr-aw-the-lesson-of-denver-broncos-matt-prater-may-be-that-calling-in-sick-is-sometimes-the-best-thing-for-the-team#commentsTue, 28 Jan 2014 12:00:04 +0000http://life.nationalpost.com/?p=131221

Matt Prater is one of the best kickers in American football. He made 25 of 26 field goal attempts in the regular season for the Denver Broncos, and went five for five in the playoffs. Among his successes was the NFL’s longest-ever field goal of 64 yards.

And yet, last week, while the rest of his team prepared for this Sunday’s Super Bowl, Prater’s boss, Broncos’ coach John Fox, told him to stay home. For three consecutive days.

Why? Because Matt Prater was sick. And the coach didn’t want him to infect the rest of the team.

Under the media microscope created by Super Bowl week, Prater’s sick days triggered a lot of discussion and debate — and one I find particularly interesting given the ongoing arguments about sick days that have occurred across Canada this month.

The discussion began earlier in January, when the president of the Ontario Medical Association, Dr. Scott Wooder, released a flu-season reminder that included the assertion that bosses should “not require sick notes” from employees. Policies that require sick employees to justify their absences with notes, Wooder said, force “patients into the doctor’s office when they are sick, which only encourages the spread of germs to those in the waiting room.”

Front-line primary-care doctors often find sick notes to be one of the more vexing parts of the job

Front-line primary-care doctors often find sick notes to be one of the more vexing parts of the job. Early in my career, when I worked in community-based urgent-care clinics, the university students would come in like clockwork every exam season. “Doctor, I missed my English exam two days ago because I was too sick to go,” one might say. “Can I get a note?” Another classic scenario involved a first-time patient coming in to request a sick note because a boss was stressing them out.

University administrators and employers hope that docs will act as detectives, deducing whether patients are telling lies about their health

University administrators and employers hope that docs will act as detectives, deducing whether patients are telling lies about their health. But the wealth of medical information available on the Internet makes any illness easy to fake — particularly at walk-in clinics, where physicians rarely know their patients well. The Canadian Medical Association and the Ontario Medical Association have both produced position papers clarifying the physician’s role in the return-to-work process — but the reality is, most front-line physicians don’t have the time to do this well. They tend to default to the request of the patient.

There are physicians who have been trained to understand health and the workplace, and I’m one of them. Our training is in something called occupational medicine. Such occupational physicians are experts in determining whether a given illness or condition makes it impossible to work. But even occupational physicians can find it tricky to navigate the potential conflicts of interest our role poses. A physician works in the best interests of the patient. But an occupational physician is employed by a company — and sometimes the interests of the company and the patient diverge. A 2013 French study found that burnout among occupational physicians was more than double the rate of general practitioners. Perhaps the cause is the difficulty of pleasing multiple stakeholders.

How thorny all this can be is best suggested by some of what happens in the sports world. I once cared for a former NFL lineman who played in the 1990s. He described the ice baths the players took after the games, the painkillers they took before, and most of all, the way the team physicians treated most players as work horses. Team MDs used high technology and the best medicine to ensure everyone played on Sunday — without seeming to care about the long-term effects on individual players. It was all about optimal performance.

But the NFL has changed a lot in recent years. Team doctors are becoming more sophisticated when it comes to safeguarding player health — from concussions, for example, as well as more pedestrian concerns, such as the common flu. Years ago, an NFL coach may have told Broncos kicker Matt Prater to suck it up, to shake off his flu symptoms and get out there and practice for the Super Bowl. Today, Prater is told to stay home if he feels lousy, to prevent him from infecting other key players.

Most employees would prefer to be healthy and on the job, whether they’re line workers, or NFL kickers

Will the corporate world eventually go the way of pro sports, and evolve a more progressive sick policy? What would that look like, anyway? Encouraging employees to be responsible about their selection of sick days would help, as would requiring sick notes only after a sustained absence. Employers may also choose to invest in company-owned wellness clinics for rapid diagnostics and treatment for short-term illness — and the wellness clinics would be better positioned than taxpayer-funded general practitioners to provide sick notes. Most employees would prefer to be healthy and on the job, whether they’re line workers, or NFL kickers.

—Dr. James Aw is the medical director of the Medcan Clinic, a leading private health clinic in Toronto. For more information, visit medcan.com.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, no stranger to controversy north of the border, stepped into one of the more contentious issues in the United States Wednesday, declaring that the NFL’s Washington Redskins should not change their name.

“To me, that’s ridiculous,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “What are we going to call the Cleveland Indians? The Cleveland Aboriginals? Where do we start? The Skins are the Skins and I stick with the Washington Redskins.”

U.S. President Barack Obama said earlier this year if he owned the Washington team, he’d think about changing the name. The team’s owner, Daniel Snyder, is staunchly opposed to changing the name.

Ford made the comments on the same day it was learned he would return to the airwaves as a regular on a U.S. sports radio show.

The beleaguered mayor is to appear every week on the 106.7 The Fan in Washington, D.C. on a show — generously named for lazy comedians — The Sports Junkies. Ford, who has become a late-night standard on U.S. comedy shows since his admission of smoking crack cocaine and binge drinking, is going to talk sports and give weekly NFL picks.

Mayor Ford said he “can’t wait” for his appearance on the radio station.

“I like the Fish, there’s no doubt about it. I like the Bills and I like the Bears, so it’s going to be challenging.”

Mayor Ford also expressed support for preserving the Bills’ Toronto series. “I’ve always supported having an NFL team here, and hopefully that’s going to happen soon,” he said.

The mayor’s chief of staff, Dan Jacobs, confirmed to the National Post Wednesday morning that Ford’s first appearance would be Thursday morning. The show says he will be appearing at 8:40 a.m., which would be well ahead of the time he normally gets to city hall for work.

Toronto mayor Rob Ford on the show tomorrow and hopefully weekly to pick NFL games RT @mainiac12345: what was announcement, I missed it:(:(

Since the scandal at city hall surrounding Rob Ford unfolded in late October, the mayor has lost two media gigs. First, his long-running Sunday radio show on NewsTalk 1010 was cancelled in November and then Sun News ended a television program, Ford Nation, after shooting a single episode.

Ford has long been one of football’s biggest backers in Toronto. He was a long-tenured coach at Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School before being dumped earlier this year and caused commotions in the crowd at both a Toronto Argonauts playoff game and an NFL game in Toronto in recent weeks.

When Ford confessed he had smoked crack cocaine last month, he was wearing a 1995 NFL tie, quickly making the tie a hot item on eBay.

Michelle Siu for National PostRob Ford, right, stands beside his brother councillor Doug Ford, left, as he speaks at a press conference at Toronto City Hall shortly after confessing he'd smoked crack cocaine.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/toronto/rob-ford-going-to-be-a-regular-on-a-radio-show-called-the-junkies-its-not-what-you-think/feed13stdToronto Mayor Rob Ford watches the Buffalo Bills play the Atlanta Falcons during the first half of NFL action in Toronto, Sunday December 1, 2013.Michelle Siu for National PostFather Raymond J. de Souza: How football became a symbol of American decadencehttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/father-raymond-j-de-souza-how-football-became-a-symbol-of-american-decadence
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New York — It’s Halloween, the last day of October, so now football players will stop dressing up. You may have noticed them, decked out from helmet to ankle spats in bright pink accessories. This is because a few years back, the National Football League started going pink in October, breast cancer awareness month. A monster of merchandising, the NFL dresses its players, coaches and referees in pink, and then sells pinkwear to raise money for the American Cancer Society. And where the NFL goes, boys of all ages follow, so the Canadian Football League does the same, and one sees university and high school players who go pink in October. The campaign, recently broadened to include other’s women’s cancers, no doubt does raise awareness, as the NFL’s marketing machine is second to none.

Yet, as is often the case with the NFL, things are not exactly how they appear. According to Business Insider, when a fan buys NFL merchandise, 50% of the purchase price goes to the retailer, which is rather standard. Of the remaining 50% wholesale price, the NFL takes a quarter of that as a royalty ($12.50 on a $100 item). In the case of Breast Cancer Awareness gear, the NFL then donates 90% of that royalty ($11.25) to the American Cancer Society.

All of which might seem generous enough; the NFL is giving most of its share. Except that one of the most popular places to buy NFL merchandise is on the NFL’s own website or in football stadia and team shops, in which case the NFL and its teams are the retailers, and therefore are entitled to the retailer’s 50% take of the entire price (which would be $50 in the case of a $100 item). In the example above, the American Cancer Society would still get its $11.25, but that would be a small fraction of the NFL’s total take. Given the propensity of the NFL to create alternative uniforms in order to sell more merchandise, a cynical sort might suspect that the breast cancer campaign is less a public-spirited initiative than a clever rigging of the system for the NFL’s benefit.

The NFL knows something about rigging the system. The NFL headquarters over on Park Avenue is an impressively luxurious, high-tech six-storey complex. It doesn’t appear to be the HQ of a non-profit institution, like, for example, Christ Church Methodist a few blocks up the street. (NFL commissioner Roger Goodell earns $29-million a year.) On Sundays, Christ Church offers a dinner for the homeless. On Sundays, the NFL receives billions for the broadcast of its games. Both the Christ Church homeless dinner and the NFL are tax-exempt non-profits. In 1966, the NFL’s lobbyists got Congress to add “professional football leagues” to the category of tax-exempt charitable institutions, like food banks and orphanages. In America, nothing is too unjust, nothing is too craven, nothing too brazen, when it comes to shoveling public dollars and privileges to the millionaires who play football and the billionaires who hire them.

I am a football fan. So too is Gregg Easterbrook, a gifted journalist and noted author on public policy, who writes the best weekly football column for ESPN.com, “Tuesday Morning Quarterback.” His recent book, The King of Sports: Football’s Impact on America, chronicles the game he loves. The opening and closing chapters show the game at its best — deliberately so, Easterbrook tells us, for the chapters between are a tale of corruption, deception and exploitation. Abuse of political power by the NFL; abuse of taxpayers by the super-rich; abuse of young men by college football programs; abuse of health, from concussions to obesity: For those who love football, it is a sobering look the unlovely parts of our game.

The fraudulent excesses of football are a fitting symbol for all the rest

“Until public attitudes change, those at the top of the pro football pyramid will keep getting away with whatever they can,” Easterbrook writes. “This is troubling not just because average people are taxed to provide subsidies, and special government favours are granted so a small number of NFL owners and their families can live in great wealth, as modern feudal lords and ladies. It is troubling because athletics are supposed to set an example — and the example being set is one of selfishness. Football is America’s game. Should the favourite sport of the greatest nation on Earth really be one whose economic structure is based on inequality and greed?”

America is no longer the greatest nation on earth, thanks to its decadent culture and various other reasons that have nothing to do with football. But the fraudulent excesses of football are a fitting symbol for all the rest — because the NFL has become the fallen nation’s bread and circuses — not just in October, but year round.

WASHINGTON — The Oneida Indian Nation’s campaign against the Washington pro football club’s team name picked up new supporters this week when more than two dozen clergy in the Washington region committed to taking the fight to their pulpits.

“Black clergy have been the conscience of America,” Oneida Nation representative Ray Halbritter said to a gathering of roughly 40 people on folding chairs in the basement of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ. “This is not a fight we could do by ourselves, or should do by ourselves.”

The Rev. Graylan Hagler, senior minister at Plymouth, asked for a show of hands Wednesday (Oct. 23) to indicate which clergy members in attendance would be willing to preach against what he termed the “R word.” More than a dozen raised their hands. Hagler said that a different dozen committed to the cause at a clergy breakfast meeting Wednesday and that, all told, he has commitments from roughly 100 clergy members to talk to their congregations in coming weeks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is denying insinuations that he stole New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s Super Bowl ring that’s now on display in the Kremlin, but says he’s ready to buy him another ring as a gift.

Putin was reacting Sunday through a spokesman to a New York Post story quoting remarks made by Kraft at an awards gala at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel last Thursday.

“I took out the ring and showed it to (Putin). And he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring,”’ Kraft said, as quoted by the Post. “I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out.”

The diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring worth about $25,000 changed hands while Kraft was visiting St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2005 with an American business delegation that met Putin. At the time, Kraft had said he gave the ring to Putin as a gift.

But the Post story quoted Kraft as saying at Carnegie Hall’s Medal of Excellence gala that he had an “emotional tie to the ring” and wanted it back, but the White House intervened and said it would be in the interest of U.S.-Russian relations to claim it was a gift.

Putin arrived in London on Sunday to meet with British Prime Minister David Cameron, and Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was asked about the Post story.

“Back in 2005 I stood behind the president’s back and I saw how that ring was presented to him. All that talk about some kind of pressure that was exerted on him (Kraft) should be the subject of a detailed talk with psychoanalysts, I think,” Peskov told The Associated Press.

“At the same time, I am aware that this gentleman (Kraft) is feeling such a horrible pain about the 2005 loss,” Peskov said. “The president will be ready to send him another ring as a gift, which he (Putin) can buy with his own money.”

Stacey James, a spokesperson for the Kraft Group, the holding company for Kraft’s business ventures, including the Patriots, said Sunday that the Post article shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

“It’s a humorous, anecdotal story that Robert retells for laughs,” James said in a statement. “He loves that his ring is at the Kremlin, and, as he stated back in 2005, he continues to have great respect for Russia and the leadership of President Putin. In particular, he credits President Putin for modernizing the Russian economy. ”

The statement added that “an added benefit from the attention this story gathered eight years ago was the creation of some Patriots fan clubs in Russia.”

The Super Bowl ring is on display in the Kremlin library along with other gifts to the Russian leader, according to Peskov.

Kraft can take some consolation because he has two other Super Bowl rings given to him for his team’s other NFL championships.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/vladimir-putin-denies-reports-he-stole-robert-krafts-super-bowl-ring/feed7stdVladimir-Putin-Robert-KraftJonathan Kay: Head injuries are killing football — and a big piece of America will die with ithttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/jonathan-kay-head-injuries-are-killing-football-and-a-big-piece-of-america-will-die-with-it
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/jonathan-kay-head-injuries-are-killing-football-and-a-big-piece-of-america-will-die-with-it#commentsWed, 12 Dec 2012 18:00:31 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=100799

Every time a middle-aged former NFL player takes his own life — with the subsequent autopsy showing a brain scan that looks like something from a nursing home’s palliative-care wing — football comes one step closer to extinction.

It won’t happen this year, or next year, or the year after that. But sooner or later, football as we know it will die. It likely will survive in some form, but with a status similar to that of boxing: as a dangerous, taboo pursuit for the heroic, desperate and self-destructive. It won’t exist as something you watch on thanksgiving or celebrate as part of college culture. It certainly won’t be something we promote as an activity for children.

According to Rush Limbaugh, blame for football’s coming demise lies with “the tentacles of liberalism.”

“You start listening to the people talk about the negatives of the game … that’s how the left does it,” he told his radio listeners on Tuesday. “They guilt you into accepting their global-warming belief. They guilt you into accepting everything they want. They make you the one responsible. You, the spectators, the fans, you’re the real reason football is the bloodthirsty killer sport that it is, because you’re willing to pay to see people maimed.… I’m telling you, I’ve seen this for 25 years. I know the left. I know liberalism.”

At first blush, it seems ridiculous to blame “the tentacles of liberalism” for the rising concern over football players’ brain injuries — even by the low intellectual standards that govern Limbaugh’s mouth. After legendary Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Andre Waters, 44, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2007, forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu reported that brain tissue from Waters (who literally lost count of the number of concussions he got during his playing days) resembled that of an 85-year-old man with Alzheimer’s. Various other former NFL players have followed Waters to the grave under roughly similar circumstances. Unless Limbaugh is arguing that men such as Omalu are lying, or that Alzherimer’s disease is “junk science,” it’s not clear how this ongoing tragedy has any political dimension at all.

What modern forensic science and epidemiology have taught us is that the medical ravages of football are far, far greater than we ever imagined — so great that it is hard for any thinking person to watch the game without feeling a pang of horror and guilt every time two heads smash together: Every “big hit” increases the likelihood that either hitter or hittee will shoot himself in front of wife and children a few decades hence.

Then again, one of the right’s favourite narratives involves the notion that scheming liberals are using science to destroy mother’s-milk American traditions. And sometimes, this gives rise to politically motivated counter-spasms that descend into farce. The global-warming “skeptic” community has been embracing increasingly exotic theories (cosmic rays!) in a bid to discredit mainstream, peer-reviewed science. And when Michelle Obama launched a campaign to encourage children to eat healthy foods, Sarah Palin began pushing children to eat s’mores and cookies — as if childhood obesity and diabetes were just liberal myths. Limbaugh’s hysteria over football must be understood within this context.

Yet there is a grain of truth of Limbaugh’s complaint: What would America be without big gas-guzzling cars, sugary apple pie and football on the weekend? Why, it would look a lot like liberal Manhattan — where no one drives, or eats carbs, or tailgates. The left might not have invented science, but it sure seems to have a left-wing bias.

The removal of football as a mass-market sport would be especially traumatic to the country, for it is difficult to overstate how existentially important the game is to Americans, especially in the South and Midwest. A United States without high-school football on Friday night, college gridiron on Saturday and NFL on Sunday will be like Canada without any level of hockey — virtually unimaginable.

And yet it will happen. That’s because, however invincible football may be as a cultural force in America, it is smashing up against the immovable object of childhood safety. Back in October, NPR’s Tom Goldman took in a pee-wee football game in the all-American town of Angleton, Tex. (pop. 18,000), a place where parents tell reporters things like this: “[My 8-year-old son] plays football on Saturday. Sunday morning we’re in church because I told him he needs to be able to give thanks. And we make sure we read the scripture. We pray over him, so that God protects him. You just have to go with God and let him play.”

But even in Texas, Goldman found parents who are increasingly concerned about the dangers that the game presents. One dad told Goldman that he’s yanking his kid out of tackle football the first time he gets a concussion. Other parents might not wait even till then: A prominent neurosurgeon, Robert Cantu, has published a book urging parents not to let their children play tackle football until they are 14 — by which time, almost all of them will be invested in other, less violent sports.

The result will be a whole generation of children growing up with the knowledge that football is not an ordinary sport like basketball or soccer. Simply put, it exceeds the engineering design limits of the human body. And the carnage comes, not just in the form of broken bones, but also broken brains. There are ways to make hockey and soccer safer. But there is no helmet technology in the world that can get us around the fact that a human skull decelerating from full sprint to dead stop in a tiny fraction of a second — an event that comprises the very essence of “good,” “hard-hitting” football; and not just a penalized aberration, as in other sports — cannot protect the mushy contents therein.

I was once a big football fan, but stopped watching the game for this reason. Yes, I’m the killjoy at thanksgiving who asks that the channel be changed to tennis or the news. I won’t lie: People (i.e., in-laws) do indeed mock me for my efforts. But that’ll change. And the world will be a better — albeit more liberal — place when it does.

The controversy in Alberta over political donations made by Edmonton Oilers owner and billionaire Daryl Katz — who got around the $30,000 limit on political donations by having his friends, family and business colleagues donate to the Progressive Conservative party for a total of $300,000 — highlights a major problem with the business of professional sports: It is much cheaper to get governments to build new facilities, than for billionaire owners to shell out the money themselves. Perhaps it’s time to give professional sports leagues a dedicated source of funding to pay for infrastructure projects, like new stadiums.

There’s a huge upfront cost to building sporting venues, and there’s little reason for owners to raise private capital when governments can be talked into putting up taxpayer cash — even though numerous studies have shown that sports venues bring little or no economic benefit to the region.

The way to remedy the situation and save taxpayer money would be to find an alternative financing model for professional sports teams. The solution may lie in a bill that is currently before the Senate — one that professional sports leagues have opposed.

Bill C-290, which was passed by the House and is currently being studied by a Senate committee, would legalize single-event betting. At the moment, if Canadians want to bet on sports legally, they can only do it through provincial lottery systems, which require people to make multi-event, or parlay, bets.

Graham Hughes for National PostActor Jay Baruchel poses for a photograph at his home in Montreal, Friday, August 26, 2011.

If, for example, someone wants to bet on a World Series game, they would also have to bet on at least two other games. Since the next World Series game would be the only baseball game available, they would have to put money on football, or some other sport. This poses an obvious problem for someone who just wants to make the game more exciting and is not interested in the outcome of football games.

Major League Baseball, the NBA, NHL and NFL have all come out against the bill, claiming it could ruin the integrity of their sport. “Losing bettors and fans … may in turn become suspicious of every strikeout or error, and the game’s integrity would be open to question,” said Toronto Blue Jays president Paul Beeston.

One has to wonder what makes these leagues think their employees are so easily corruptible. Horse racing seems to have found a way to incorporate betting into the sport without constant allegations of cheating, and it would arguably be harder to throw a game in a team sport, where you would need a conspiracy of players — most of whom are already earning millions of dollars. It is possible that lower-paid game officials might be more vulnerable than players, but the games in all major sports are so closely monitored and scrutinized by modern television technology that any suspicious calls would quickly become evident.

Steps can also be taken to ensure that sports books track large bets, which is more than is done currently. At the moment, there is little to prevent people placing single-event bets — they just have to do it on Internet sites that are often located offshore. Betting on football is such an integral part of the game, the disruption caused to the gambling business was considered a major reason the NFL settled a recent strike by game officials. Sports books are also commonplace in the U.K. Legalizing the practice in Canada would keep the money at home and provide more control over who’s running the sports books and who’s placing the bets.

Even though there are steps governments and the leagues can take to prevent gambling from affecting the integrity of the game, Conservative MP Michael Chong thinks “professional leagues might think twice about establishing a new team up north if Bill C-290 becomes law.” This is why provincial governments should work toward developing a system whereby the leagues can run their own wagering, in a similar manner to how horse racing operates today.

If the leagues allowed fans to bet on their games, it would give them more control over how the betting takes place, and provide a stable source of funding for new infrastructure projects. Such a move is not only likely to bring professional sports onside with Bill C-290, it would also add to reasons to locate teams in Canada.

To be clear, Bill C-290 gives provincial governments, not sports teams, the ability to offer single-event betting. But the provincial governments could work together, possibly in conjunction with the feds, to use sports-wagering revenues to finance new stadiums. All the players involved would want to make sure the system is not open to abuse.

Everyone scores big by allowing sports teams to use gambling revenue to build new arenas: It would save taxpayers’ money by giving teams a stable source of funding; it would prevent governments from getting entangled in political tangles like the ongoing saga in Edmonton; and, perhaps most importantly, it would give people the freedom to wager on games without using shady overseas websites.

From the sound and the fury surrounding Tim Tebow’s displays of Christian fervour on and off the football field, one would think he is the only athlete to have ever declared Jesus as his personal Lord and teammate.

The Denver Broncos’ quarterback is a source of anger and irritation for the many who do not get his strain of evangelicalism — not only do comedians mock him, one even said he would like to kill him.

He has also become the whipping boy for all those Americans who have become sick of religion in public life, whether it be on the football field or during a Republican debate.

“There is a growing polarization around religion in society and you are seeing this acted out around Tim Tebow,” said Tom Krattenmaker, a Portland, Ore.-based commentator on religion and society.

Related

Mr. Tebow, now in his second year as the Broncos’ quarterback, has also been the bane of sports writers who are sick of what they see as his evangelical shtick.

The fact he has not had much success as a professional probably adds to the irritation.

It does not help he has declared: “If you have Jesus Christ in your heart, you are going to spend eternity in Heaven. If you don’t, you’re going to spend eternity in Hell.”

Justin Edmonds/Getty ImagesTebow praying before a recent game

In a recent edition of the online football journal Grantland, Brian Phillips, wrote the player has become the “avatar or champion of evangelical Christianity in football,” and it is impossible not to see his on-field performance as a referendum on the Bible.

“There’s a problem with this, though, a problem that I’m convinced lies at the heart of the minor cultural puzzle that Tebow represents,” Mr. Phillips wrote.

“The problem is that if you’re rooting against Tebow because he’s religious, you’re giving way to the trial-by-combat impulse. And the whole idea of the trial by combat is that there’s a higher power adjudicating the combat. So what … many secular football fans … are really rooting for is for God to make Tim Tebow fail as a means of discrediting God.”

Yet, Mr. Tebow is one of a long line of professional football players who have brought Christianity to the gridiron.

For decades, players have been dropping to one knee after they score a touchdown or pointing heavenward to thank their heavenly Father.

It is likely the only sport in which opposing players kneel together after the game to thank God for whatever they need to thank Him for after playing football.

“I think he has become a lightning rod for people who disagree with the increasingly public role of faith,” said John Green, a University of Akron (Ohio) political scientist who has long studied religion and public life.

“It’s also quite possible that this has little to do with him personally. Over the past couple of decades there has been a steady increase of non-religious people in the U.S. Some of who are atheists and agnostics, some who are indifferent and some have spiritual and religious values, but don’t care much for organized religion.”

But the reaction to Mr. Tebow’s story poses an obvious contradiction. The United States is considered one of the most religious nations on Earth. Candidates for the Republican party’s presidential nomination are forever tripping over one another to declare Jesus Christ as their personal lord and saviour — despite what is supposed to be strict separation of church and state.

Prof. Green said the reaction to Mr. Tebow and what is going on in the GOP could be related: those who are sick of it in football are also becoming increasingly sick of it in politics.

It is as if Mr. Tebow’s overt Christianity has come along at a time in U.S. history when a critical number of people simply cannot stand hearing about it in any sphere.

Comedian Bill Maher, someone who deeply mistrusts all religion, suggested the Republicans draft Mr. Tebow to run for president.

“Since all Republican voters want in a candidate is a devout Christian … they should just go ahead and nominate Tim Tebow,” he said.

Al Messerschmidt/Getty ImagesTebow in happier times, with the Florida Gators

“Tim Tebow is so cuckoo for Christianity that he used to write Bible verses in the charcoal under his eyes. Creepy to some, but for redneck America, they couldn’t love this guy more if he was sculpted out of bacon.”

Yet, Mr. Tebow is not associated with a political party or has taken a political stand. It is just that in the climate of the United States today it is assumed anyone who has orthodox beliefs must also be a right-winger — and hence a Republican.

“There has been a really strong social movement of evangelical Christianity for half a century,” said Mr. Krattenmaker, the author of Onward Christian Athlete, who is now writing a book on the changing attitudes of young evangelicals.

“And we’re used to seeing athletes making gestures and talking about God’s role. It’s been a very conspicuous part of the culture.

“But Tebow seems to have taken it to a much higher level. A lot of people don’t want to hear it anymore — from anyone, not just athletes. People are getting really irritated with public displays of religion. It’s like fingernails on chalkboard.”

Mr. Tebow was a top-notch football player at the University of Florida, where he led the school to two national championships. It was there he started inscribing the number of biblical verses on his “eye black.”

His story was a Christian dream: His parents were missionaries in the Philippines when his mother became pregnant. Because of difficulties she was advised to have an abortion. Tim was her “miracle baby.”

In 2009, his name became well-known outside college football when Mr. Tebow and his mother made an anti-abortion ad that ran during the 2010 Super Bowl.

Many have said he is too good to be true. He has set up a foundation that cares for 600 orphans around the world and he is open about the fact he is a virgin, saving himself for marriage.

John Wilson, editor of the U.S. evangelical website Books & Culture, based in Illinois, said Americans are finding Mr. Tebow hard to take because he not only proclaims his faith, he actually does something about it.

“You have someone who has done good deeds. It’s not the story of someone being portrayed as a hypocrite. But he is almost like a fictional character,” Mr. Wilson said.

“The people who mock Mr. Tebow tend to be people who think they are good at seeing things at multiple points of view. But they can’t get out of their own little corner and see their own beliefs that way.”

He also noted that while people jeer at Mr. Tebow, they celebrate the redemption of Michael Vick, the Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterback who served jail time for torturing dogs.

“It’s the irony or ironies,” said Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Krattenmaker said he does not hold Mr. Tebow responsible for the visceral reaction his personality has created. He sees him more as the wrong character for the times.

And the more he thinks of Mr. Tebow’s situation, the more he wants to root for him.

If quarterback Ben Roethlisberger can lead his Pittsburgh Steelers to victory in Sunday’s Super Bowl, it’s a good bet he’ll look into the television cameras right after the game and thank God for his remarkable pilgrimage from pariah to hero — a player who started the season with a four-game suspension after his second sexual-assault accusation in a year, but ended it with a championship ring.

It’s also likely that more than a few of the 100 million viewers will roll their eyes (or worse) at Roethlisberger’s piety, figuring him to be just another scandal-tarred bad boy using Jesus to protect his lucrative career and maybe position himself for some sponsorship deals.

Yet new research on religion and National Football League players suggests that if Roethlisberger isn’t being cynical about the role of faith in his life, then we shouldn’t be either.